Which were domesticated first, cats or dogs? - Quora Quora I would think dogs because TECHNICALLY dogs (at least as we know them) didn't exist before humans (they were wolves). 211 Views Written Jan 13 Some of you may know that my father is in federal prison on firearms charges. I wasn’t actually sure he knew when my birthday is - he’s a morphine addict and his memory is…iffy. The last time I saw him, he held a knife to my throat and threatened to kill me. Since he’s been in prison, we’ve talked on the phone once or twice a month and I’ve been sending him cards and letters about once a week. You ... How Wild Cats First Became Domesticated and Why Dogs are Tamer : Nature & Environment : Science World Report How Wild Cats First Became Domesticated and Why Dogs are Tamer Catherine Griffin First Posted: Nov 11, 2014 07:33 AM EST Cats and kittens can be found in pet owners' households across the world. But how did these felines first become the cute and cuddly pets that they are today?

Cats and humans have shared the same households for the past 9,000 years and now, scientists have studied the cat genome to learn a bit more about how these creatures were first domesticated. Wolves and, in consequence, dogs were actually domesticated over 30,000 years ago. Ancient humans used these canines and watchdogs and even as hunters. Cats, in contrast, were domesticated far later-if you can even call it domesticated. "Cats, unlike dogs, are really only semidomesticated," said Wes Warren, one of the researchers, in a news release. "They only recently split off from wild cats, and some even still breed with their wild relatives. So we were surprised to find DNA evidence of their domestication." The project to sequence the cat genome began in 2007. The original goal was to study hereditary diseases in domestic cats, though the study eventually revealed far more than that. The scientists examined the genomes of both domestic cats and wild cats, finding specific regions of the domestic cat genome that differed significantly. More specifically, the researchers found changes in areas of a domestic cat's genome that involved memory, fear and reward-seeking.

"Humans most likely welcomed cats because they controlled rodents that consumed their grain harvests," said Warren. "We hypothesized that humans would offer cats food as a reward to stick around." This isn't all they found. The researchers also compared the cat's genome with those of other mammals, including a tiger, a cow, a dog and a human. The differences in the cat genome helped explain characteristics such as why cats are almost exclusively carnivorous and how their vision and sense of smell differ from other animals, like dogs. "Cats tend to be more active at dawn and dusk," said Michael Montague, one of the researchers. "So they need to be able to detect movement in low light." The findings reveal a bit more about our favorite felines. While the genomes of domestic cats have changed little since their split from wild cats, there is evidence of the species' more recent domestication. The History of How Dogs Were Domesticated Variation on a Dog. Michael Blann / Getty Images Updated June 02, 2016. Dog history is really the history of the partnership between dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) and humans.

That partnership is based on a human need for help with herding and hunting, for an early alarm system, and for a source of food in addition to the companionship many of us today know and love. Dogs get companionship, protection and shelter, and a reliable food source out of the deal. But when this partnership first occurred is still under some controversy. Dog history has been studied recently using mitochondrial DNA, which suggests that wolves and dogs split into different species around 100,000 years ago: but whether humans had anything to do with that, no one really knows. Recent mtDNA analysis (Boyko et al.), suggests that the origin and location of dog domestication, long thought to be in east Asia, is in some doubt. continue reading below our video Test Your General Science Knowledge A recent study led by Robert Wayne (vonHoldt et al. 2010) reported that dogs appear to have a higher proportion of wolf haplotypes from grey wolves native to the Middle East. That suggests, contrary to earlier studies, that the middle east was the original location of domestication. What also showed up in this report was evidence for either a second Asian domestication or a later admixture with Chinese wolves.

European Paleolithic Dogs Part of the puzzle of the domestication of dogs lies in the Upper Paleolithic of Europe , beginning perhaps as long ago as 30,000 years. Recent genome research (Thalmann et al. 2013) reports strong evidence that European Paleolithic dogs do represent a domestication event. Read more about European Paleolithic Dogs A burial site in Germany called Bonn-Oberkassel has joint human and dog interments dated to 14,000 years ago. The earliest "nobody-argues-about-it" domesticated dog was found in China at the early Neolithic (7000-5800 BC) Jiahu site in Henan Province. Upper Paleolithic sites in Europe with evidence for dog interaction with humans include Goyet Cave in Belgium, Chauvet cave in France, and Predmosti in Czech Republic , European Mesolithic sites like Skateholm (5250-3700 BC) in Sweden have dog burials, proving the value of the furry beasts to hunter-gatherer settlements. Danger Cave in Utah is currently the earliest case of dog burial in the Americas, at about 11,000 years ago.

Two Domestications? In 2016, a research team led by bioarchaeologist Greger Larson (Frantz et al.) published mitochondrial DNA evidence for two places of origin for domestic dogs: one in Eastern Eurasia and one in Western Eurasia. According to the analysis, ancient Asian dogs originated from a domestication event from Asian wolves (at least 12,500 years ago); while European Paleolithic dogs originated from an independent domestication event from European wolves (at least 15,000 years ago). Then, says the report, at sometime before the Neolithic period (at least 6,400 years ago), Asian dogs were transported by humans to Europe where they displaced European Paleolithic dogs. That explains why earlier DNA studies reported that all dogs were descended from one domestication event, but scholars found evidence of that event from two far-flung locations. There were two populations of dogs in the Paleolithic, goes the hypothesis, but one of them--the European Paleolithic dog--is now extinct. A lot of questions remain: there are no ancient American dogs included in these data, and Frantz et al.

suggest that the two progenitor species were descended from the same initial wolf population and both are now extinct. It will be interesting to see what the American dogs tell us--but in the meantime, the research is part of a growing body of evidence suggesting pre-Neolithic contact between Europe and Asia, most recently in discussions of barley's multiple origins . It seems clear that our post-Ice Age ancestors were long-distance wanderers. Dogs as Persons A reanalysis (Losey and colleagues 2011) of dog burials dated to the Late Mesolithic-Early Neolithic Kitoi period in the Cis-Baikal region of Siberia suggests that in some cases, dogs were awarded "person-hood" and treated equal to fellow humans. A dog burial at the Shamanaka site was of a male, middle-aged dog (probably a husky) which had suffered injuries to its spine, injuries from which it recovered. The burial, radiocarbon dated to ~6200 years ago (cal BP), was interred in a formal cemetery, and in a similar manner to the humans within that cemetery. Losey and colleagues believe the dog may have lived with its human family at Shamanaka.

A wolf burial at the Lokomotiv-Raisovet cemetery (~7300 cal BP) was also an older adult male. The wolf's diet (from stable isotope analysis) was ungulates, and although its teeth were worn, there is no direct evidence that this wolf was part of the community. Nevertheless, it too was buried in a formal cemetery. These burials are exceptions, but not that rare: there are others, but there is also is evidence that people of the Kitoi culture (late Mesolithic fisher-hunters in Baikal) consumed dogs and wolves, as their burned and fragmented bones appear in refuse pits. Losey and associates suggest that these are indications that Kitoi hunter-gatherers considered that at least these individual dogs were "persons". Prev How Cats Became Domesticated | IFLScience How Cats Became Domesticated Cinnamon / Kristina Narfstrom, University of Missouri-Columbia via National Human Genome Research Institute By Janet Fang 11/11/2014, 02:11 Researchers comparing the genomes of domestic cats with that of wild felines reveal the genetic underpinnings of domestication.

It appears that the conversion from feral to Friskies had to do with genes for memory, fear, and kitty treats. The findings , published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, could also explain signature cat traits like low light activities and a hypercarnivorous diet. Cats have been our furry, purr-y companions for at least 9,000 years -- with breeds emerging around 150 years ago -- yet we know very little about their domestication. “Humans most likely welcomed cats because they controlled rodents that consumed their grain harvests,” Wesley Warren of Washington University says . “We hypothesized that humans would offer cats food as a reward to stick around.” Back in August, a team led by St. Petersburg State University researchers reported the whole genome of the domestic cat (Felis silvestris catus) based on a female Abyssinian named Cinnamon who lives in Columbia, Missouri.

Now, to identify genome alterations that led to cat domestication, Warren and colleagues compared Cinnamon’s genome with the genome assemblies of 22 purebreds from six other domestic cat breeds -- the Egyptian Mau, Maine Coon, Norwegian Forest, Birman, Japanese Bobtail, and Turkish Van -- and four wild cats belonging to two species, European wildcat (F. s. silvestris) and Near Eastern wildcat (F. s. lybica). Finally, to get a more complete cat biology picture, they also looked at four other mammals: tigers, dogs, cows, and humans. “Cats, unlike dogs, are really only semi-domesticated,” Warren says in a news release . “They only recently split off from wild cats, and some even still breed with their wild relatives. So we were surprised to find DNA evidence of their domestication.” Compared with wildcat genomes, domestic cat genomes showed evidence of recent selection in genes linked to memory, fear-conditioning, and stimulus-reward learning -- which are all related to the evolution of tameness.

“They would have needed to become less fearful of new locations and individuals,” Washington University’s Michael Montague tells Science , “and the promise of food would have kept them sticking around.” Domestic cats also had genetic variations that help explain certain aspects of feline biology, including genes involved in fat metabolism, increased auditory and visual acuity, and a sense of smell that’s different from dogs. To digest their hypercarnivorous diets, cats need genes for breaking down fats; the team found lipid-metabolizing genes in cats and tigers (not humans and cows) that changed faster than can be explained by chance. Cats can hear in the ultrasonic range, and they’re more active at dawn and dusk; accordingly, the team identified genes that evolved to expand their hearing range and low light vision. Finally, cats rely less on smell to hunt than dogs, so it’s not surprising that the researchers found fewer genes for smell in cats. They did, however, find more genes related to an alternate form of smell: the detection of chemicals called pheromones, which allow these solitary hunters to find the opposite sex.

Cat domestication may date back more than 5,000 years Cat domestication may date back more than 5,000 years Cat domestication may go back more than 5,000 years Post to Facebook Cat domestication may date back more than 5,000 years Cat domestication may go back more than 5,000 years Check out this story on USATODAY.com: CancelSend A link has been sent to your friend's email address. Posted! A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. 18 To find out more about Facebook commenting please read the Conversation Guidelines and FAQs Cat domestication may date back more than 5,000 years Traci Watson, Special for USA TODAY Published 3:08 p.m. ET Dec. 16, 2013 | Updated 11:40 p.m. ET Dec. 16, 2013 Those mysterious creatures have left few telltale paw prints on their route to domestication. Felis Silvestris lybrica - the Near Eastern wildcat - native to places such as Iraq and Iran, is the ancestor of today's house cats.

(Photo: Grobler du Preez, Thinkstock) Story Highlights Felines were the animals of farmers All domestic cats trace their roots to the Near Eastern wild cat Next up: DNA analysis A pet that spits and claws at a friendly hand, then yowls in the yard until dawn raises an ungracious thought: Are cats really domesticated? Scientists say yes, but they also admit they know little about how and when felines came to live with people. Now scientists excavating a Stone Age village in China have recovered a rare and valuable snapshot of cats in the early stage of their relationship with our own species. The researchers say the new findings are the oldest known indication of cats benefiting from their association with people, which is the first step on the road to domestication. "What's really exciting about this study is it's the first evidence that shows us the processes by which cats came to live with humans," says Fiona Marshall of Washington University in St. Louis, an author of the new study. "Clearly they were the animals of farmers" – unlike dogs, which were domesticated by hunter gatherers thousands of years before cats and humans began their complex alliance.

As could be expected from a creature of mystery, the cat has left few solid clues to its route to domestication. Genetic studies reveal that all domestic cats trace their roots to the Near Eastern wild cat, making the Near East one site of domestication as well as a cradle of agriculture. On the island of Cyprus, a wild cat was deliberately buried close to a high-status human some 9,500 years ago, suggesting that people had a special feeling for felines even then. Egyptian paintings from roughly 4,000 years ago clearly show people caring for cats. What happened in between is unclear. Now bones and other finds from Quanhucan, a farming village in central China, are filling the gap. When researchers combed through Quanhucan's garbage pits, they turned up eight cat bones, two of them more than 5,000 years old. Other finds suggest the village would've been heaven for a hungry cat. Rodents had burrowed into the village's grain storage pits, and the villagers used grain-storage jars designed to keep rodents out.

Also found were the bones of a zokor, a common mole-like rodent that eats the roots of crops, the team reports in the new issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Analysis of the cats' bones showed that one had eaten surprisingly large amounts of grain – not a favored food for carnivorous felines – perhaps by scavenging scraps, perhaps by being fed. The worn teeth of another cat showed it lived to old age. Did someone perhaps care for it? The DNA of the Chinese cats hasn't been analyzed yet, leaving two possible explanations. Either these cats were domesticated cats that had been imported from the Near East, thousands of miles west, or they were Chinese wildcats in the middle of becoming domesticated. "Wildcats are shy animals," says University of Missouri geneticist Leslie Lyons, who was not involved with the new research. "They're probably coming close to human settlement because of mice … and (the villagers) are probably letting them do that." She says the results add feasibility to the idea that cats were domesticated in China as well as in the Near East. The cats at the site certainly weren't treated like pets, says geneticist Carlos Driscoll of the Wildlife Institute of India.

He points out the cats' bones were thrown into a trash pit along with the bones of other wild animals, and the cat that survived to a great age may have just been tolerated by humans rather than cared for by them. All the same, the study "is a very interesting and evocative first chapter," Driscoll says. "The ancient DNA evidence is going to be the real punch line." 1148 CONNECT TWEET LINKEDIN 18 COMMENTEMAILMORE Read or Share this story: NEVER MISS OUT The Short List Let us bring the headlines to you every night. Stay current and catch up on the biggest stories of the day. Are Cats Domesticated? - The New Yorker Are Cats Domesticated? October 23, 2015 Recent genetic and archaeological studies suggest that house cats are wilder than we think. “The cat does not offer services,” William Burroughs wrote. “The cat offers itself.” But it does so with unapologetic ambivalence. Greet a cat enthusiastically and it might respond with nothing more than a few unhurried blinks. Later, as you’re trying to work, it will commandeer your lap, keyboard, and attention, purring all the while.

A cat will mew at the food bowl in the morning and set off on a multiple-day trek in the afternoon. Dogs are dependent on us to the point of being obsequious, but cats seem to be constantly reëvaluating the merits of our relationship, as well as their role in domestic life. “Are cats domesticated?” is one of the most frequently Googled questions about the animals, based on the search engine’s autocomplete suggestions. It’s a question that scientists have been asking, too. The latest answer, based on insights from recent archeological discoveries and genome-sequencing studies, is that cats are semi-domesticated. Conventional wisdom holds that the ancient Egyptians were the first people to bond with the cat, only four thousand years ago. In 2004, however, a team of French researchers working in Cyprus unearthed the ninety-five-hundred-year-old remains of a human and a cat buried side by side. Last year, an analysis of cat bones and teeth from a fifty-three-hundred-year-old settlement in China indicated that the animals were eating rodents, grains, and the leftovers of human meals.

It appears that, following the advent of agriculture, wildcats in the Near East and Asia likely began to congregate near farms and grain stores, where mice and rats were abundant. People tolerated the volunteer exterminators, and wildcats became increasingly comfortable with people. Whether this affiliation began five or ten millennia ago, the evidence suggests that cats have not been part of our domestic domain for nearly as long as dogs, which have been our companions for perhaps forty thousand years. At first, the cat was yet another opportunistic creature that evolved to take advantage of civilization. It was essentially a larger version of the rodents it caught. Somewhere along the line, people shifted from tolerating cats to welcoming them, providing extra food and a warm place to sleep. Why? Perhaps because of the cat’s innate predisposition to tameness and its inherent faunal charm—what the Japanese would call kawaii. Look up photos of the thirty-eight or so wildcat species and you might be surprised at how easy it is to picture one curled up on the couch. Dogs likely initiated their own domestication, too, by prowling around campfires in search of food scraps.

Whereas our ancestors quickly harnessed dogs to useful tasks, breeding them to guard, hunt, and herd, they never asked much of cats. We have also been slow to diversify cat breeds. Many dog, horse, and cattle breeds are more than five hundred years old, but the first documented cat fanciers’ show didn’t take place until 1871, at the Crystal Palace, in London, and the most modern cat breeds emerged only within the past fifty years. This relatively short and lenient period of selective breeding is manifest in the cat genome, Wesley Warren, a geneticist at Washington University in St. Louis*, said. In a study published last year, Warren and his colleagues analyzed DNA from several wildcats and breeds of domestic cat, including an Abyssinian named Cinnamon. They confirmed that, genetically, cats have diverged much less from their wildcat ancestors than dogs have from wolves, and that the cat genome has much more modest signatures of artificial selection. Because cats also retain sharper hunting skills than dogs, abandoned felines are more likely to survive without any human help. In some countries, feral cats routinely breed with their wildcat cousins. “There’s still a lot of genetic mixing,” Warren said.

“You don’t have the true differentiation you see between wolf and dog. Using the dog as the best comparison, the modern cat is not what I would call fully domesticated.” Not all researchers agree. “I don’t think it makes sense to talk about animals as semi- or fully domesticated,” Greger Larson, a paleogeneticist and archeologist at Oxford University and an expert on domestication, said. “Any threshold you try to define will necessarily be arbitrary.” Larson tends to agree with the views of Melinda Zeder, an archeologist at the Smithsonian Institution, who has written extensively on the domestication of both plants and animals. Zeder characterized domestication as an ongoing symbiosis between humans and another species—“a sort of pact that ends up being mutually beneficial,” she said. This relationship, she argued, can follow many paths and result in somewhat different outcomes, which she has catalogued. Sometimes people gradually domesticate a prey species—sheep, goats, cattle—or deliberately remove non-prey animals from the wild and breed them for a specific purpose, as we’ve done with horses.

In other cases, hunger draws a wild animal—dogs, chickens, guinea pigs, cats—to human society, where it becomes increasingly tolerant of people. Even a single domestic lineage can contain varying degrees of dependency and a range of temperaments. “Cats are domesticated,” Zeder said. “But I think what confuses people about cats is that they still carry some of the more aloof behaviors of their solitary wild progenitors. Sometimes they don’t give a damn about you, but they are very much part of your niche. Cats have us do everything for them. We clean their litter, stroke them, admire them, but unlike dogs they do not have to constantly please and satisfy our needs. They are probably the ultimate domesticate.” When I was growing up in California, I had a tuxedo cat named Jasmine. When I called her, she would sometimes stop in place and stare at me for a few minutes before trotting over, as though she needed to preserve the pretense that this meeting was entirely her idea. She was incredibly affectionate when she wanted to be, but she spent most of her time in solitude.

Like so many of her ilk, she loved to perch herself on or a near a windowsill, surveying the outdoors for hours. It strikes me now how quintessentially feline that behavior is: a docile carnivore balanced on the border of a human home, alone and content, yet with all its senses tuned to the world beyond. *Correction: An earlier version of this post misidentified Wesley Warren’s university affiliation. More: A Brief History of House Cats | History | Smithsonian Contact Privacy Policy Terms of Use A Brief History of House Cats It may be that "nobody owns a cat," but scientists now say the popular pet has lived with people for 12,000 years In the United States, cats are the most popular house pet, with about 90 million domesticated cats slinking around 34 percent of U.S. homes.

( Wikipedia ) smithsonian.com June 30, 2007 On any of the surprising number of Web sites dedicated entirely to wisdom about cats, one will find quotations like these: "As every cat owner knows, nobody owns a cat" (attributed to Ellen Perry Berkeley); "The phrase 'domestic cat' is an oxymoron" (attributed to George F. Will); and "A dog is a man's best friend. A cat is a cat's best friend" (attributed to Robet J. Vogel). Of course, there is such a thing as the domestic cat, and cats and humans have enjoyed a mostly symbiotic relationship for thousands of years. But the quips do illuminate a very real ambivalence in the long relationship between cats and humans, as this history of the house cat shows. The Mystery of the Ancient House Cat It has taken a while for scientists to piece together the riddle of just when and where cats first became domesticated. One would think that the archaeological record might answer the question easily, but wild cats and domesticated cats have remarkably similar skeletons, complicating the matter.

Some clues first came from the island of Cyprus in 1983, when archaeologists found a cat's jawbone dating back 8,000 years. Since it seemed highly unlikely that humans would have brought wild cats over to the island (a "spitting, scratching, panic-stricken wild feline would have been the last kind of boat companion they would have wanted," writes Desmond Morris in Catworld: A Feline Encyclopedia), the finding suggested that domestication occurred before 8,000 years ago. In 2004, the unearthing of an even older site at Cyprus, in which a cat had been deliberately buried with a human, made it even more certain that the island's ancient cats were domesticated, and pushed the domestication date back at least another 1,500 years. Just last month, a study published in the research journal Science secured more pieces in the cat-domestication puzzle based on genetic analyses.

All domestic cats, the authors declared, descended from a Middle Eastern wildcat, Felis sylvestris, which literally means "cat of the woods." Cats were first domesticated in the Near East, and some of the study authors speculate that the process began up to 12,000 years ago. Egyptians cats were associated with the goddess Bastet, and thus revered and immortalized in many forms of art, like this one acquired by Henry Walters. The pendant on this cat's necklace displays a standing goddess with the double-crown nursing the young Harpokrates. ( Image Source: Wikipedia ) Dating from 664 B.C. - 395 A.D, Egyptians mummified their house cats, such as this one courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Note that this is a model or reproduction of a cat mummy, as there are no bones inside. The ancient Egyptian reverence for cats is well-known—and well-documented in the archaeological record: scientists found a cat cemetery in Beni-Hassan brimming with 300,000 cat mummies.

( National Museum of Natural History ) Possibly from the Ptolemaic Dynasty, this papyrus column with two cats dating back to 305-30 B.C.E. is made of faience. It is a good demonstration of how much Egyptians adored their house cats that statues like this one were made in their likeness. ( Freer Sackler Museum ) This cast of an ancient Egyptian statuette of a cat is held by the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and was discovered in 1922. ( National Musuem of Natural History ) Small amulets made of faience, like this one (dating back to 664-525 B.C.E.), or alternatively made of stone, ceramic, metal, or glass were common personal possessions in ancient Egypt. They were most frequently fashioned in the form of gods and goddesses or of animals sacred to them and worn as protection. Courtesy of the Freer Sackler Museum. ( Freer Sackler Museum ) Opus vermiculatum in the National Museum is a floor mosaic with a cat and two ducks from the late Republican era, first quarter of the 1st century BC.

House cats were considered to be both useful and reverent to Roman society. ( Image Source: Wikipedia ) Civilization's Pet While 12,000 years ago might seem a bold estimate—nearly 3,000 before the date of the Cyprus tomb's cat—it actually is a perfectly logical one, since that is precisely when the first agricultural societies began to flourish in the Middle East's Fertile Crescent. When humans were predominantly hunters, dogs were of great use, and thus were domesticated long before cats. Cats, on the other hand, only became useful to people when we began to settle down, till the earth and—crucially—store surplus crops. With grain stores came mice, and when the first wild cats wandered into town, the stage was set for what the Science study authors call "one of the more successful 'biological experiments' ever undertaken." The cats were delighted by the abundance of prey in the storehouses; people were delighted by the pest control. "We think what happened is that the cats sort of domesticated themselves," Carlos Driscoll, one of the study authors, told the Washington Post.

The cats invited themselves in, and over time, as people favored cats with more docile traits, certain cats adapted to this new environment, producing the dozens of breeds of house cats known today. In the United States, cats are the most popular house pet, with 90 million domesticated cats slinking around 34 percent of U.S. homes. God and Devil: The Cat in History If cats seem ambivalent towards us, as the quotations from cat fan-sites indicate, then it may be a reflection of the wildly mixed feelings humans, too, have shown cats over the millennia. The ancient Egyptian reverence for cats is well-known—and well-documented in the archaeological record: scientists found a cat cemetery in Beni-Hassan brimming with 300,000 cat mummies. Bastet, an Egyptian goddess of love, had the head of a cat, and to be convicted of killing a cat in Egypt often meant a death sentence for the offender. Ancient Romans held a similar—albeit tempered and secularized—reverence for cats, which were seen as a symbol of liberty. In the Far East, cats were valued for the protection they offered treasured manuscripts from rodents.

For some reason, however, cats came to be demonized in Europe during the Middle Ages. They were seen by many as being affiliated with witches and the devil, and many were killed in an effort to ward off evil (an action that scholars think ironically helped to spread the plague, which was carried by rats). Not until the 1600s did the public image of cats begin to rally in the West. Nowadays, of course, cats are superstars: the protagonists of comic strips and television shows. By the mid-90s, cat services and products had become a billion-dollar industry. And yet, even in our popular culture, a bit of the age-old ambivalence remains. The cat doesn't seem to be able to entirely shake its association with evil: After all, how often do you see a movie's maniacal arch-villain, as he lounges in a comfy chair and plots the world's destruction, stroke the head of a Golden Retriever? David Zax, a writer in Washington, D.C., recently wrote a brief history of Wimbledon . Like this article? Semi-domesticated? House cats not far removed from wild, genome shows - LA Times Semi-domesticated?

House cats not far removed from wild, genome shows Cat genome Karen Bleier / AFP/Getty Images Domestic cats are not that far removed, genetically, from their wildcat cousins, new research says. Domestic cats are not that far removed, genetically, from their wildcat cousins, new research says. (Karen Bleier / AFP/Getty Images) Monte Morin Contact Reporter Cats and humans shared a common ancestor roughly 92 million years ago It may not surprise the average cat owner, but a team of researchers has discovered that the genome of domestic mousers differs only slightly from that of wildcats. In other words, after 9,000-odd years of living alongside humans, the house cat remains only semi-domesticated, according to a report published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. After comparing the genome of an Abyssinian cat named Cinnamon with those of humans, tigers, cows, dogs and another cat breed known as the Birman, the scientists found that cats retain many of the hunting, sensory and digestive traits of their wild kin.

Researchers did find a signal for human influence on cat evolution, however, in fur color and pattern, as well as a set of genes that are thought to be associated with tameness. “We believe we have created the first preliminary evidence that depicts domestic cats as not that far removed from wildcat populations,” said senior author Wes Warren, an associate professor of genomics at the Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis. It's not easy being a lean, mean killing machine. Whether a fleet-footed cheetah or a lie-in-wait puma, a hunting feline¿s survival balances on the point between how much energy they lose in hunting for a meal and the energy they gain from actually eating it. Now, two new studies in the journal... (Amina Khan) The discovery that as few as 13 genes may separate domestic cats from their wild ancestors was a “genuinely important” advance, according to John Bradshaw, an anthrozoologist at the University of Bristol School of Veterinary Sciences in Britain, who was not involved in the research. “This can only be the beginning of what will surely lead to a revolution in cat breeding,” Bradshaw wrote.

By pinpointing genes responsible for cat behavior and temperament, humans could more easily guide more changes in the animal. “The potential is there to finally guide the cat through the remaining stage of domestication, not only producing cats that are better adapted to the demands of 21st century living, but at the same time enhancing their well being,” Bradshaw wrote. Hemmed in by freeways and other development, the few mountain lions living in the Santa Monica Mountains are predictably -- and dangerously -- losing genetic diversity. (Julie Cart) Unlike dogs, which some researchers say began their association with humans roughly 30,000 years ago, archaeological evidence suggests that cats first entered our living space when we began to grow crops, about 10,000 years ago. Researchers hypothesize that early farmers welcomed the felines because they hunted grain-eating rodents. Farmers rewarded the efficient rodent-slayers with extra food, researchers say. Yet it's only in the last 200 years that humans have placed intense selection pressure on cats, producing up to 40 different breeds, Warren said.

Warren and his colleagues said that this relatively short period of breeding was partly responsible for the modest influence domestication has had so far on the evolution of Felis silvestris catus. However, it wasn't the only reason. “Most importantly, some continue to interbreed with wildcat populations,” Warren said. When examining the cat's genetic makeup, the researchers found that the animals retained qualities of wild hypercarnivores — hunters that eat meat almost exclusively. “Carnivores are endowed with extremely acute sensory adaptations, allowing them to effectively locate potential prey before being discovered,” the authors wrote. “Within carnivores, cats have the broadest hearing range, allowing them to detect both ultrasonic communication by prey as well as their movement.” In addition to retaining visual acuity that enables them to hunt in low-light conditions, cats are also able to metabolize high-protein, high-fat diets. “Cats fed a diet rich in saturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids showed no effects on plasma lipid concentrations that in humans are risk factors for coronary heart disease and atherosclerosis,” the authors wrote. Researchers have hypothesized that the cat's peculiar, meat-intensive diet is one of the reasons it has existed on the edge of domestication.

Dogs can be kept and bred on a vegetarian diet, which is much more difficult with cats. Prior to the development of nutritionally sustaining pet foods, cats most likely had to rely on their hunting skills to obtain sufficient meat. Though breeding of cats has focused mostly on controlling hair color and pattern, the authors identified gene changes that some researchers say are associated with the “domestication syndrome hypothesis.” That hypothesis argues that when animals are bred for domestication, changes occur in a group of embryonic stem cells called the neural crest. These changes can result in diminished fearfulness and other qualities that appeal to humans. The hypothesis has yet to be proved experimentally, however. “Our results suggest that selection for docility, as a result of becoming accustomed to humans for food rewards, was most likely the major force that altered the first domesticated cat genomes,” authors wrote. Today, it's believed that there are as many as 600 million cats worldwide.

Follow @montemorin for science news Will Purr for Treats: How Cats Became Domesticated Will Purr for Treats: How Cats Became Domesticated By Tia Ghose, Senior Writer | November 10, 2014 03:00pm ET MORE Credit: dezi/Shutterstock.com Thousands of years ago, a wildcat first started lingering on the outskirts of a human camp, perhaps to eat the mice living in people's granaries. Now, billions of house pets and countless cat videos later, researchers have revealed the genetic roots of the special relationship between humans and cats. A new study has revealed the genetic changes that make kitties snuggle up with humans and purr for treats. Many of the changes have altered the cat's motivation to seek rewards and have changed their fear of new situations, said study co-author Wesley Warren, a geneticist at the Genome Institute at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The team also discovered the genetic changes that make cats keen nighttime hunters and why their noses aren't as sensitive as their canine cousins'.

[ Here, Kitty, Kitty: 10 Facts for Cat-Lovers ] Domestic mystery Cats and humans go way back: Some studies suggest cats were first domesticated about 9,000 years ago in the Near East, while others trace cat domestication back to China around 5,000 years ago. But though the relationship between you and Gingersnap may seem completely natural, domestication is an extreme rarity in the animal world. Humans have only domesticated a handful of animals — such as the dog, cow, chicken, sheep and goat — and scientists did not know which genes were involved in the domestication process. Then, in the 1950s, scientists at a fur farm in Novosibirsk, Russia, began breeding foxes for their friendliness to humans. Within a few generations, foxes wagged their tails and licked the faces of humans affectionately. Along the way, the foxes developed floppy ears; lighter, patchy coats; and curly tails — traits found in other domesticated animals, such as dogs, pigs and sheep. The fox study, which is still going on today, hinted that some of the behavioral domestication genes were tied to those curly-tail, floppy-ear genes.

And a study published earlier this year in the journal Genetics found that domesticated animals have changes in their neural crest, a group of embryonic cells that guide the development of various organ systems. But without advanced genetic analysis, it was difficult to tease apart exactly which genes were responsible for domestication. Big cat, little cat In 2007, scientists sequenced the genome of an Abyssinian cat named Cinnamon (who has since died). But that analysis wasn't complete, so scientists couldn't say much about the genes underpinning domestication. Warren and his colleagues did a second sequence of Cinnamon's genome, along with the genomes of several other domestic cats and two species of wildcat, and compared them to the genomes for the tiger, the dog and many other animals. [ Animal Code: Our Favorite Genomes ] In domestic cats, genes linked to motivation and fear had faced strong evolutionary pressure over history, leading the cats to be less shy and more driven by rewards, Warren said. Compared to dogs, domestic cats and their wild cousins, such as tigers, had several more copies of genes for receptors to detect pheromones, or sex hormones. This could help the solitary creatures find mates, Warren said.

Dogs, in contrast, have many more copies of genes for smell receptors, which may account for their amazing sense of smell. The genes for feline night vision and keen hearing were also under strong selection in both big cats and house kitties. Those areas of the genome may explain why felines are such expert hunters, Warren said. Cat origins The findings help underpin some of the biological changes associated with domestication in cats. "The study is great, especially in defining changes in the genome that have led to domestication or, more correctly, to the adaptation of the ancestors of domestic cats that allowed them to associate with humans and thus gain both protection from their predators and an ample food supply (rodents)," Niels Pedersen, a veterinary researcher at the University of California, Davis who was not involved in the study, said in an email. The paper provides a springboard to analyze cats in greater detail, added Dominic Wright, a geneticist at Linkoping University in Sweden, who was also not involved in the study. "It will be great to take some of these regions which they identify and go further with them," Wright told Live Science.

But the study only identified relatively large gene regions that changed in the domestic cat, and it's still not clear exactly what those genes do or how they are regulated, he added. To really understand that, scientists now need to focus on these specific gene regions, studying animals with different versions of the genes and then analyzing the effects on their behavior, Wright told Live Science.

Question: Which was domesticated first? The dog? Or the Cat?
Answer: The dog